AI Meets Authenticity: Justin Konikow on Building Client Loyalty in Real Estate
In this episode of "Crazy Shit in Real Estate," host Leigh Thomas Brown interviews Canadian real‑estate entrepreneur Justin Konikow. The conversation weaves together personal anecdotes, industry‑wide concerns, and practical tactics. They discuss the erosion of professional standards as agents consider leaving governing bodies like NAR and CREA, and the risk this poses to consumer protection. Justin shares how he models his business after Chick‑fil‑A’s disciplined service model, using AI to streamline operations while keeping the human touch. They explore the value of post‑closing client care, the pitfalls of vanity‑metric‑driven marketing, and the power of authentic storytelling through low‑friction content creation (DJI Osmo, vlogs, behind‑the‑scenes reels). The dialogue also touches on the cultural differences between Canadian and U.S. markets, the importance of clear pricing communication, and the need for agents to focus on craft rather than hype. Throughout, both hosts stress that real estate success stems from ethical standards, consistent service, and genuine relationships, not just flashy social media posts.
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You're listening to Crazy Shit in Real Estate. You'll be amazed at all these wild but true situations that others have found themselves in, because on this show you'll hear uncensored, unbelievable stories from the world of real estate. I'm Leigh Brown. Let's dive right in. I'm Leigh Brown. This is Crazy Shit in Real Estate. Today I'm bringing to you one of my dear friends from north of the border in Canada, Justin Konikow. You're going to enjoy the conversation. And hopefully you'll take a few notes away to make your life a little more excellent. I'll see you on the other side. Finally.
I was here the whole time.
No, like we've been trying to schedule this multiple times.
Yes, for sure. Absolutely. I just wanna make sure.
Start off by singing, oh Canada.
I'll be coming down there maybe to celebrate on November 5th for you guys as well. It's, it's looking good.
We're not gonna get too excited yet, but we need to end. You need to, y'all need to, emulate what we're doing here.
It'll probably happen shortly after.
We just need to let the people have some voice again. That's all. No big deal.
Yeah. Yeah. No kidding. Very true. How are you? Everything looks great. Your office looks awesome.
Welcome to Concord, North Carolina, where I always talk about needing to change my drop ceiling out because I hate the black grid, but that would cost money that I'm not willing to spend.
I've been to Concord a bunch of times actually. Two of my good friends live there. So David and Jason Benham are good buddies of mine.
The Bedlam Boys?
Yeah, so they— I read their book, Whatever the Cost. I asked them the story. I cold emailed them, and then I went down to see them 2017. Yeah, they're like family to us. Like, yeah, whenever we go down to the States, I talk— I stop in to see them.
And have you been to Fire Church?
No, I've never been there, actually. No, we've never been there for long enough. We typically pop in, say hi, and then keep heading down to Florida.
So that is so cool because Oh, that's your Fireflies.
Oh, kick it out. That's fine. That's my note taker.
Okay. Yes. Go mess my screen up.
So yeah, just kick it out.
That's totally fine. Put in waiting room. Okay. I didn't know that about you. That makes me love you even more.
Cause they're wild. It makes me happy that you're friends with them. That's awesome.
They are so on fire and so foundationally strong, but obviously that runs in their family.
Yeah. 100%. No, I'm in the Expert Ownership thing. I was always there as a friend and kind of consultant, and I think they're great people with what they're doing. So not their family.
Honestly, most people when presented with, all right, do I stick to my guns or make big money? We know what people do now because they worship money and they don't understand why there's only supposed to be one God before us. That's why.
Money, power, influence, followers. I read their book in my sauna actually, and then I emailed them. They said no. And then it was interesting that the dynamic was pretty funny. They probably thought I was a killer or like some crazy stalker or something that was coming to see them, but they gave me a day of their time. I hung out with them for a whole day. We ate Chick-fil-A and I got to know them really well. Yeah.
Of course they took you to eat the Lord's chicken.
That's right.
That's how we lovingly reference it here. But there's a whole story in that about your business structure because they're the most profitable of the fast food chains and they've never strayed from, we're not open on Sundays. But yet we see it in real estate agents that think they have to work 24/7 because, oh, if I'm not available, somebody else will get the deal. And then they burn themselves out. They're unable to serve effectively because they're exhausted.
They're bad husbands, wives, spouses, partners, parents. And the equipment rests on Sundays, right? I read Kathy Truett's book about Chick-fil-A. I actually have gone into AI and taken my operations manual and said, optimize this as if I was the Chick-fil-A of real estate.. And I have an output in a Google document that I've messed around with. And it really comes down to like service and excellence, right? We catered Chick-fil-A for our whole staff for one of our family reunions. And I got a call at the end of the day and the guy's, hey man, how was it? And I thought it was the guy from the store. I'm like, hey, where are you located? And he's like, the States, like North Carolina or somewhere like that. And I'm like, that's absolutely incredible that you guys have these kind of things in place. Because I said, honestly, everything was great. Except for the ordering process, like it was very complicated to do a large catering order. I don't know that I would do it like that every time because I just don't have time. So I'm like, if you can streamline that, we'll order from you guys 5, 6 times a year. So it was great because they got critical feedback and like the customer service, I felt important as a client that he took time out of his day to call me. So it was pretty cool.
Is there a direct overlay between that and real estate? And what's the number one thing agents don't do post-closing? They don't even check on the person they just spent every waking minute with for 3, 4 months and they drop them cold.
Absolutely. That's why.
Okay. So I hate AI. I think it's of the devil, but now that you mentioned I could use it to make my business look like Chick-fil-A, now I'm in, I feel like I should go look at it, but I guess I can have somebody else do it because I don't like AI, but that's, I never thought about that application.
Yeah. Honestly, I find that the, you can learn to use the tool or let the tool use you, right? It's like social media, TikTok, and all the other apps. All of those could be the devil if used in the wrong way. I use AI to be more human, if that makes sense. So I use it to summarize and clarify. But really, the most important thing when it comes to AI is the 10% at the beginning of the input and the setup of the scenario. I let it do 80%, and then the last 10% is the most important where it can't do what I can do. It can't empathize. Actually, it doesn't know my core values, but the adjustments and the tweaking happens at the beginning and at the end. And it's funny. So I just did this last week. Somebody gave me this prompt that's ripping around all the real estate circles and it said, go to ChatGPT if you've been using it for a while and say, knowing everything you know about me, what's something that I wouldn't know about myself? And it's fascinating, the input that it gave me back. And it's actually giving me some clarity on direction that I'm going to be applying some of my time and resources.
I don't use ChatGPT and I don't use AI if I can help it. So what would it say about me? I would have to go, I guess I should download it and try it so I could see what it knows about me based on the fact that I haven't used it. This is intriguing.
Yeah, you do have to use it for a while in order for it to have context. But if I put this to the same context where I've known you for long enough or something you may not know about yourself is you are a people connector, right? I definitely think that you'd know that from your real estate perspective. I think you're driven from a compliance professionalism standard, like in your mind, I know that's the most important, but I think the threads of relationships you built that transcend real estate, like we just talked about with the Benham brothers, may not be something that's at the forefront of your mind as much as it would be for me in terms of who else do you know that I probably know, or like what other connections overlap in ecosystems, right?
Okay, so now I'm intrigued. And we never did introduce you, by the way. So please tell my listeners and viewers who you are, where you're located.
I just figured out about 2 minutes ago we were live. I thought we were just chatting like friends.
I do record the whole thing because it's a very organic opening. But you— I remember to introduce people, but that's the best shows are like that.
So my name is Justin Konikow. I'm one of the owners of Prime Real Estate. We're located in southwestern Ontario, Canada, along with my incredible wife. She's the brain. I'm the face of the organization. She handles all things operations. I handle all things marketing and sales. We have a production company called Prime Media Productions. I speak at a national level. I run the Prime People Podcast. I love creating content, but I'm actually an agent in production that is buying and selling every single day with my team of Navy SEAL operators. I've sat on professional standards, brokerage advisory, MLS advisory committees for years. I think it's incredibly important. And I also think the ethics in our industry could use a lift, which is why I'm here, because I think you're one of the best at championing that.
It's one of the things that concerns me the most as real estate goes through this restructure, as we have people who decide to opt out of the professional organization, obviously one of the core binders in the professional organization is the shared belief that we should have a code of ethics that we should abide by. As people opt out, are they going to opt out of ethical behavior too when there's nobody to hold them to account? Now, I know that there's some that their core values would never change regardless of membership in an organization. But we have others that might say, I can't get turned in now. What does it matter? Need one more deal. And I do have some concerns about that. Do you think we're going to see a shift in real estate behavior because of the structure changes?
Yeah, I think the lack of standards of governance could be a massive issue moving forward. I do think— and I got excited, that's why I tried to jump in. Apologies, I do that.
You don't have to apologize. We're in real estate.
The, the reason that I got excited about it was I was like, it's already happening now to a certain degree, right? We have regulated real estate. You're part of NAR. We have CREA up in Canada, but it's very similar from the standpoint that at least we're part of a governing body of real estate and they have the ability to institute standards and enforcement, and they're doing that more and more up here. What I'm concerned about is if we go the same route as the States and NAR, which Realtor.ca in Canada is privatizing as of yesterday. This was actually recently announced. They're going for profit now. You're a for-profit company that's competing against the other MLS providers that are out there and you are becoming one of multiple options. And if as an industry the rules of engagement change depending on which platform I'm on, to me that's massively problematic and we're actually going backwards where In order to do business, the path forward is very simple. It's create one standard of practice for all agents. We all buy and sell real estate. It might be commercial, it might be investment, it might be residential. So the data input pieces are different, but I don't care where you sell real estate. You have to be an expert at pricing, marketing, and negotiation. And the sequence of events in a contract to close are all identical, albeit detailed differently depending on the asset class. So if we go into a world that you're speaking about, and I said this actually publicly and to my board, I said, if I stop seeing value in you providing us a standard of care enforcement and a standard of service, maybe I'll just hang up my real estate license and opening a marketing company because then I'm not regulated by anybody and I can do whatever I want and I'm out in the Wild West and it's a massive issue in our industry. That's even a thing that consumers don't realize, that if you're working with an unregulated or unlicensed agent, your deposit gets stolen, it's gone. You're never getting it back. There's no protections. Same thing in the automotive industry. If you buy from a curbsider, you're not protected. If that guy just scammed you out of $50,000, right, you, you can go crying to whoever you want. It's not going to do anything. And that's where the difference is between regulated real estate, unregulated real estate. And I'll land my plane on this. You said, what happens if people start leaving organizations like NAR or places that in my opinion, are built to enforce regulated real estate, you're going to end up in the same place that you would be if you were in an unregulated market, only you're going to be hamstrung by the fact that you actually have a real estate license.
And that's— it's a concern. And I also, back to what you mentioned about the consumer public, they have no idea that— and we in the business have fooled ourselves for a long time thinking they could tell the difference between a realtor and a real estate agent, whether that's CREA or NAR. We thought there was a difference. There was in effect no difference in the consumer's mind. And so they don't understand that there is a fund to protect them from the regulatory body side, which doesn't protect from someone who's not licensed at all, which to your point, if all you do is stick a sign in a yard to market a property, that doesn't require a license from— if you start really breaking this thing down and then we do go back 60 years to policies that allowed for boycotts from firm to firm. We had discrimination in the marketplace. We had a Wild West that had gotten itself very organized. And then frankly, I just look at the future. If you don't have any kind of standard of care, I love that phrase. That's really good. What I'm stealing. So if you don't have that, how inefficient is this business about to get if I have to go input a listing in separate places differently to make sure that my clients have the best possible experience. It's going to cost me an enormous amount of time. At the same time that we're being told we shouldn't be compensated at all when it comes to certain interventionary regulators. And of course the commenters on the internet, which mean nothing to me, but they're still out there rumbling about how we don't deserve to be paid, but now we're supposed to triple our time. And then the consumer is going to get an entirely different experience with no protections. I don't like where we're going, especially when we had a really great, efficient market that just wasn't properly defended, to be honest.
Yeah, you touched on so many good points there. And I'll use a case study that if a consumer happens to be watching this or a brand new agent watches this, they really understand the depth of what you said is I brought on a new agent and I'm training him and his grandparents' house we're putting up for sale. And I was there this morning assisting with the listing. I'm like, this is a great opportunity for him to learn the entire process. And his dad had called me like, can you just put a sign up on Monday? I'm like, no, it doesn't really work. Can you put a sign up today? I was like, no, it doesn't work like that. What has to happen is we have to get all the information on your property put together. We have to establish what date is it going to go live? I can't put a sign up until 3 days before that listing hits MLS. Otherwise I'm in breach of the code of ethics. I have to get the photographer's booked, the sign guy booked. I have to get the walkthrough done of your property. I'm going to bring my assistant to the property to teach him how to properly fill out the data sheet and the entire sequence of events. We have to figure out showing configuration, we have to figure out access. And this is all even before doing the entire video shoot, sharing it on social, going live, showing a video, doing an actual reel. That's even before the listing was live. And then think about once a listing actually goes live and showing inquiries start coming in and I have to translate it to, say, a senior client that maybe isn't as adept with technology, the amount of handholding that happens there. Then an offer comes in, then I have to negotiate and deal with the actual offer. I have to understand all the legalities in that contract to make sure my client's protected, deal with all the moving parts of where are they moving to, when are they moving, what are the chattels, what's the structure of the offer look like, price versus closing date versus the actual conditions. Then I have to negotiate that deal. Then I have to go through contingencies and then I have to carry that until closing and then all of a sudden realize that, oh, the lender didn't get the money in on time. The lawyer forgot that that was even on his desk. And save the deal at the end of the day amidst maybe moving and all the other fun stuff that happens. If you go back with everything that I just said now and you took us out of the equation and gave that troll online what he wanted, saying, yes, I'll do anything except put a sign on the lawn or agree to be paid per hour, I promise you he would probably go back to my commission fee very quickly versus paying me upfront for all of the time that I'm going to put in pre-listing, and post-listing for that one transaction that may or may not sell.
And all I can picture is a meme on the internet where you go through all of that. And because the consumer's eyes glaze over, they're like, so yes, so when does this go in the yard?
And there's a balance. Again, this is where I think the conversations we've had goes, are you a professional or somebody that got into real estate because you watched Selling Sunset and you thought you could just make a lot of money? Because if you're a professional, I don't run my P&L off one transaction. I run my P&L off the entire company, all of the deals I've won, all the deals I've lost, the team that I've structured, the salaries that we have, like that's all integrated. So I've always found it very odd that the consumer looks at us and, and maybe it's 'cause it's their transaction, but only look at the fee as if we're making that and not realizing that we actually run a business. I think that's what the problem is.
Well, I think we might be as practitioners slightly or completely on the hook for that because if you look at how the major brands in real estate, and you and I both used to be with the bigger brands and of course have chosen a different pathway now, but what I call Realtor prom season, which lands in February and March, and the awards that we give out are based on production and dollars and commission. And so all we talk about is the money. And then when team leaders advertise for new agents to come in, how many times have you seen an ad, oh, make $100,000 in your first year? We have too many leads. And so they're recruiting with money and then the Instagram posts and the Facebooks will say, sold another one, best closing month ever. And agents have gotten into this horrible routine of only talking about the dollars and the sales success instead of the underlying work. And, and I know this because I've seen it so many times. My agents will be covered in cobwebs because they were in somebody's attic helping them pull the boxes out and they just, they weren't even asked to do it. They just did it because the person needed help and they just lean in and do things. And then they spend all night on the phone to the detriment of their spouse, trying to save a deal, but they never ever expose the amount of time that goes into the transactions, which is why I do love the hourly plan. We've been offering one. And one person chose it because they thought that we don't do very much. And about 60 days in said, can we just go ahead and switch over to traditional? Because this is going to get high. We're like, absolutely, we can switch you back over. But then I realized it's on us. We never told the story effectively. And in fact, look at the marketing phrase that's pervasive in real estate. I'll get you the most money in the shortest amount of time with the fewest hassles. We run around bragging that we're going to deal with the hassles. Without ever showcasing these things could happen and I got you, boo. I'll take care of it. I'm going to help you. We're going to figure it out. But we hid it from people. What were we doing? Yeah.
Talking about social media, what you shared about all of the, hey, I got this award. Hey, we just sold this house. Hey, we just did that. I was going to say most of those posts don't actually create clients. Feels good as an agent. And it usually, it's like the billboards. They do if you're strategic about them, but most billboards and most of those posts are made from other agents to make that agent feel good than it is for actual consumers. I did a post today. It was the Celia House, which was done by Halcyon, who's one of the best builders that we've ever worked with. They built quality product, very pretty, and it was like a Cribs episode behind the scenes of design build, like the entire process where they found their inspiration, the arches, the kitchen, the color selections, the tile work, everything that goes into building a new home. I don't even think I said once in the video who I am. I don't— you know me, obviously, if you follow me. But if you don't follow me and you land on that video, you're going to get educated on the homebuilding process. And it's not an ad. What's wild is it's going viral right now. It's going to actually surpass my two top performing posts any minute now. And the comments reflect that because I think we're in the business of storytelling and people connecting, similar to what I said earlier. Problem solving, not sales. And I think that's where people get it really twisted, is if you're an agent that's only focused on the sale or the transaction or the commission check, you are going to lose all day long to the Leigh Thomas Browns and the Justin Konikows that are focused on the outcome in the relationship and really willing to eat crow and be vulnerable and show people the good, the bad, the ugly of our business because it's going to humanize us, it's going to make us better, and those people are going to work with us for a lot longer than anybody that you just do a quick sale with.
And it's why I can make fun of the production posts because I've made them in the past. And if I go back and look at them, the comments are like you said, they're other agents. Sometimes it's the other top producers that are affirming their decision to be buddies with you because you're on the same level. Sometimes it's the ones that are jealous and occasionally it's your mom or your aunt or somebody that says something nice. But I don't think any home seller in my market is going to call me and say, hi, I saw that you're number one and felt like I should have the number one agent. We fed ourselves that. What they want is, what color should I use? What is the design scheme? Are you gonna tell the story? We lived in this house 40 years. Can you get us another person that's gonna live here for 40 years too? And it's all intertwined and it's the most delightful part of the business too, which we seldom talk about. It's the craziest thing in our branding, but you showcased it perfectly here when you talk about somebody else, whether it's the new construction and their thought process, or it's the client and obviously with permission. What you did to help them get to where they are on the pathway. I just did an episode with Jamal Green. He is a man. He's so cool. He's young. He's in Chicago. He's focused on helping people buy the first property, but to go bigger with commercial and multifamily. And he's vision casting. And I look at real estate and I think, what would happen in our entire profession if we vision cast more? Could we overcome the HGTV mindsets and God help us all, the Selling Sunset that people think is real. 'Cause are we living in a low information matrix right now where people think Selling Sunset's real? 'Cause I hate to think that there are people who believe that's a documentary, but I— there are.
It, it depends on what business model they're chasing after. 'Cause in, in reality, reality, like if you, if you're looking for brand deals, yeah, it'd probably be a great platform to be on from that perspective. But at the end of the day, I think what it comes down to is authenticity. We all know this, and, and especially in the circles of being online versus being in the trenches as a practitioner, I've always tried, struggled with that dichotomy a little bit. And I'm very selective about where I show up and do these types of things, cuz I've done things in the past where my name or my voice has been used on somebody's platform for something they never told me they were going to do. But I think in all things, business, personal, social media, it all gets exposed at the end of the day. And I think it really comes down to the craftsmanship of what we do and the craftsmanship of whatever your viewers are doing. And you can niche down in this business. It's one of the most powerful things you can do. I started actually as a commercial broker and the art of a commercial real estate deal or the art of a residential or a luxury deal or a rural deal, or the art of working with a team, building systems and processes, working with an effective admin and marketing team like just because you're not at where somebody is today doesn't mean you need to compare yourself to them. I think what I really want people to take away from everything I'm saying right now is focus on the art of what you are working on right now. Make sure that you're actually increasing your skill set, auditing should you even be doing that thing. And if the answer is yes, taking the world on the journey with you. I'm recording this on a little DJI Osmo to rip some reels after, because I'm all about documenting what I'm actually doing so I have the receipts, versus so many people in our industry want to become podcasters, speakers, authors, all of the things, because they think if they do those things, then they'll be successful. When in reality, the most successful people have done the thing and talk about the thing that they did. So I think sometimes we get the order mixed up a little bit.
I'm totally jealous that you have your little camera going there to rip things from it. I was just telling one of my girlfriends yesterday, because we were in the middle of something great and we didn't record it because we totally forgot to have our cameras out. We're like, man, this is the hack.
I'll give it to you and your audience. It's the DJI Osmo 3. I got it hooked up a little bit. It's actually a lot smaller than this if I actually take it out of its little case.
But you have the dead mouse on it, which is that little microphone thingy.
This is actually a lab. So it actually, I can hook it to here. I can tell, I don't even need that little—
that is a whole kit.
DJI Osmo Pocket 3. It is honestly the most incredible little camera you've ever seen. And check this out. This is important. If people are listening to this on audio, go watch the video. This is how big the actual device is. That's it. And the mic on it's really good. It's automatic, which is incredible. It face tracks and it's not your phone. So the key for a content creator is I can have this just standing right next to me on its little tripod recording while we're having a meeting. My phone can ring, I could do a deal, no factor. It's all recording onto its own SD card. And that's the power of technology. And again, you learn to use the tool, not have the tool use you. Because I have fancy cameras, I have all the gear, yet this is what I'm shooting 90% of my content in. And if I want to go landscape for YouTube, I switch the screen and I'm done.
So I owned a DJI Osmo when they first came out, but it was not small and handheld in pocket. And so I didn't use it. And I have a technology graveyard over here that it's off camera of all the—
I've got 4 of those, Leigh Thomas Brown.
And I was at North Carolina Realtors Conference this past week and there was a guy selling Pivo, which is a thing that goes on your phone and tracks you while you're speaking and stuff. And I was like, seems familiar because I bought it 2 years ago and it's still in the box, but I can't find the box now. So our whole office has been on the hunt now. And I'm thinking I have No financial discipline when it comes to that kind of thing. Yeah. So the fact that you also have a technology leak in your budget, but you use that is intriguing to me. Yeah.
I honestly have more gear. Like I have an RS2 gimbal. I have a Matterport camera. I can go down a laundry list of thousands.
Oh, I wish I could sell that Matterport. I bought the first one when it came out and it's now dusty because my photographer has one and it's cheaper to use him.
100%. I would say of all the equipment I've ever bought, for somebody like you, this is by far the absolute best because I basically just have a GoPro C-clamp. I've got this and then I can mount it in my car or I can hear it. It's all about removing friction, right? Like I could literally hook it to my little mic stand here and it's just doing its thing while I'm doing the podcast. It's more than building the habit of doing the thing. And I think this actually touches on what we're talking about where If I'm an agent, okay, I'll make the parallel. If I'm an agent, I want to get really good at real estate. I need to wake up and learn the market every day. I need to prospect every day and I need to market myself. If I do 3 of those things, I will be in business for the rest of my life. If I want to do content and be a content creator and post consistent content instead of trying to create content and come up with ideas and scripts and all those things, if I figure out a way to document myself, learning the market, prospecting and marketing myself, it's not as much work. And I think that's where people go wrong is they try and wear so many different hats that they suck at being an agent and they suck at being a content creator when the reality is, no, just document yourself being an actual real estate agent.
What is the top genre on television? It has been since MTV's Real World. It is reality TV and reality TV is unscripted. It's scripted now when you look at The Bachelor, Bachelorette, which is So sad to see what's happened to that storied franchise. But you think about the beauty of real life, which is how those shows got so popular. And it's what people are interested in. They watch this podcast because it's not scripted. There's nothing fake about it. And they're very intrigued to hear what happens in the life of real estate because you can't get it on HGTV. So if you're watching and listening to this and you're in real estate and you think maybe I should do some video, maybe I should do something. Then you listen to Justin because you're already creating the content. All you have to do is capture it. That's all this is about.
So there is a lot of stuff on my channels. My podcast is on there. Obviously I do like training videos on using a CRM and all the things. I would share mindsets, stuff I struggled with, getting taken advantage of in business and struggles that we all go through and sharing it with other agents, trying to help them. The most popular form of content I have Actually, the vlogs that I started shooting. So I got to speak with Ryan Serhant at his event a month ago now. And I just vlogged it. I just carried this thing with me. I recorded it. I did have some structure of what is the messaging here? Like, who am I talking to? And how can I give them value? Not me, not, hey, I'm a superstar, I'm with Ryan. Me on stage, I think there was like a 10-second clip. It was, let me take them with me so they can get behind the scenes at the dinner that nobody has access to of his office and show them stuff that they would never ever see. And I realized that's what people want. So I started continuing to do the vlog series where I'm like, okay, I'm going to go set up a lakefront property for a showing. I'm going to show you how I do it to set that agent up for success, how I turn on the lights, how I know the comps, how I talk to her, how I stay out of her way with her buyer and give them privacy. My strategy is right. I did. What's funny is as I do all that stuff, I find the right people, my referral partners like you and other agents that I work with across North America that are my people. I develop real relationships with. The local people who watch those vlogs then ask me about the farmer's market that was in the vlog and why I like the barbecue chicken at Naskalins or Nasi's Farms, right? It's so interesting what you just said because that light bulb has been going off my head for the last couple months that I'm done with the highly produced, locked off, old school YouTube stuff. You're probably going to see a lot more of that content from me that is behind the scenes, negotiating deals, just living my actual life, because I think that's what people want.
Of course, that's what they want. We talk about the relationships that exist in real estate, but I think a lot of people have substituted social media likes for relationships, which is all vanity metrics. The views and the likes are vanity until you start to see the depth behind the scenes. And I love that behind the scenes angle. You could probably take that through the next 365 days of behind the scenes in real estate where it's always just the stuff happening. It is fascinating to see, oh, I could tweak my system here. I could change my checklist. As a professional, I'm always looking for little tweaks because we do things really well, but we always wanna be at a higher level of excellence. And it's the little tweaks that change things, which I don't get from somebody on the stage. I get it from the conversation in the hallway of I just got off the phone and I'm losing my mind over the phone call I just had. I'm standing with somebody else who's, oh, so I was eavesdropping. Can I give you a piece of information? I said, please take it. And then they give me the sentence that says, so you said standard of care 30 minutes ago and it's sitting here burrowing into my brain because it's such a beautiful way to say standard operating procedure, but we call them SOPs. Maybe we should call them SOCs. And I think my agents, when I send this to them in our Slack channel, they're gonna— I know what they're gonna say. Like, that sounds more like us. Find something that sounds more like how you operate that you can then convey to the public. It makes it easier for the public to like you. And if they like you, they'll use you. Then you build relationship. And then that's how you build relationship with each other. And the key to likability is genuinely the real you. It's not the fake you that agents keep putting out there, which I think going back to the first part of our conversation is why they're so scared of changes to the structure of real estate because they thought that their surface was enough. But as it turns out, the public might request more information. The public might expect, and they're afraid they can't deliver, but many of them already do deliver. They just haven't been asked to demonstrate it.
Yeah, you touched on a lot of really good points there. What you said about the standard of care with your team, I think understanding your core values and You're empathetic by nature. You actually care about people and your clients. So I think language really does matter. And then when it comes to the agents that are feeling overwhelmed by the pivot, the good news, the industry has pivoted forever for the last 100 years. Right. And it will continue to pivot forever. Back when agents were walking around with a book, their value was giving people access to the book. Then their value was, it's online. You need me for this data. And then this data was online and then they had to pivot and adjust to what consumers want. And I'm doing this with my stuff currently where, to be honest with you, like we're one of the best at media, I think, in the entire industry, like the art of storytelling, the art of a listing video, how to repurpose that into short form, use it to actually sell properties. We've worked really hard at it and I know other people are emulating what we're doing and we're still going to keep working on that game to stay ahead of the pack. But there's other aspects of our business that need improvement. Doing a deal and then not talking to them prior to close. I've done that in the past and I've had in-depth conversations with my clients about how did that make you feel? I hired a full-time real estate concierge so that doesn't happen. I'm not great at telling people what's happening on their listings every single week because I carry 60 to 80 listings. And to be honest with you, like, it would not be feasible for me to do that and be doing deals. And I always say you can give somebody service or results., and I always focused on the results, but the service is incredibly important. So we hired the service and now we're integrating that. But isn't it exciting that I found a space in my business that needed improvement? And isn't it exciting that I'm bringing people into the ecosystem to help us with that for the next stage? It's gonna be hard. I'm probably gonna fail a whole bunch. Industry's probably gonna change. I'm gonna get challenged politically in the industry. I'm gonna lose clients. I'm gonna get fired. But guess what? Every single day I wake up, I'm going to get 1% better. And in a year, 2 years, I'm going to look back and be like, oh my gosh, the version of myself that was 1.0 versus now, like, how did I ever do any business then? But that's going to continue until I'm in the ground.
Which frankly, that's the whole reason to do video content marketing, because you can very easily look back at yourself and say, oh, oh no, I am So much better now than then, because we have a visual marker, which our parents didn't have that opportunity to look back at themselves. They had to anecdotally look back at where they were operating. And frankly, we tell ourselves lies about our own past until you have to confront the old hair, which you don't have the same problems that I do when I had the spiky hair. But you know what you said that I was sitting over here writing down and I, you didn't even hear yourself say it. You thought you said they came to us for sold data. I heard you say sold data and I was like, oh, they do come to us for sold data. Because you, you think about the emotional side of real estate, the seller that you met with who knows they have to sell and every core of their being is fighting the idea they have to sell the house where the little ones grew up. And then the emotion of the buyer who to have this house and they're so emotionally tied to the house the first time they walk in and we can see it in their face. And then we're trying to structure it so they can win the property and not lose everything along the way. Is sold data, Justin, I think we're going to have to start a whole new thing about the sold data of a house.
I actually, going back to that point, the other thing I always tell people is you look at the transition of now sold data being accessible. The pivot we made was that's fantastic. So now the same data that I know, but you do not know my interpretation of that data. And you don't know if there was a good or bad agent that sold that house. You don't know why it went for the price that it went for. That's what people pay us for today. They pay us for the interpretation of the data and understanding the data. The soul. Exactly. The soul of the data. And I think in certain situations, is price more important than time on market? You're telling me time on market is the most important, yet you're looking to overprice your property. That's where a good agent, somebody that's confident, can be very transparent and tell them exactly what you think. And that's what they're actually paying you for. Too many agents have commission breath and are scared that they're not going to get the listing or they're going to lose the client if they tell them what they really think.
Okay. So obviously on my show, we like to tell little vignettes, little stories, little highlights. The bulk of my viewers are in the US. We got a few Australians, New Zealanders, Brits. We got some Spaniards. What's up, Spain? We also got a lot of Canucks. They're going to want to hear about Canadian real estate. Justin, in your years of doing real estate, you have to have something that was so uniquely Canadian, whether it was the Tim Hortons at the open house or you had to bring the Stanley Cup in to let all the agents look at it. What was the most Canadian moment you've ever had in real estate?
Probably somebody who's being objectively very nice amidst a very tense negotiation in our office system. So actually, one of the first deals I ever did was a commercial transaction. It was a 15,000 square foot building. It had over 55% vacancy on paper. It was probably worth like $50 to $650. My wife's an MBA from the Richard Ivy School of Business. Very smart girl. We priced it 4 different ways. Cost to rebuild. We did the income approach, so on and so forth. It got to a place where we're like, he kept telling us, I want over a million. And we're like, it's probably worth $650 to $750. But hey, you say you want a million, we're all on the same page. Let's advertise it and see. There was actually an agent in my own office that couldn't have been nicer to me and was being overtly nice without me realizing for a couple of weeks that he was actually being overtly insulting with the fact that we didn't have any business getting that listing. We didn't know what we were talking about and we were unqualified. Sure enough, we actually got a deal done for my client at $750,000, but we did a creative VTB, which was netting him $50,000 a year. He made over $1 million with this property because they renewed the VTB twice. And I think the reason I say that it's Canadian is don't mistake our kindness for weakness. My wife is an absolute weapon. Her analysis was 100% on point. My willingness to run through a brick wall and find a way over, around it, or through it was what made that deal happen. But also Americans are really nice people too. I think we always get the moniker of being the, the nice pleasant people up here drinking maple syrup and petting our polar bears. But I think at the end of the day, people are people. You'll find good Canadians, bad Canadians, good Americans, bad Americans, and good agents and bad agents. And hopefully that will set us off as being one of the better agents in our marketplace.
And I will just point out to all my real estate friends, you'll notice in that breakdown of that scenario, the client wanted too much. But instead of Justin and his wife just saying yes and rolling with it, they provided all of the data so that there was a great paper trail in that file. That person had been fully informed and was not being led down a path of bad data, bad information. So remember that if you're having a pricing struggle, you need to document that so that everybody's on the same page. And by the way, we look at America, at Canada, as you are America's top hat. That is who you are.
Maybe it's that one of those raccoon hats that David Crocker used to wear. One more thing I was actually going to say. Real estate is art and math, people. A lot of times people, agents get so stuck on pricing or underpricing to get multiples. The art is you don't know who's out there searching, right? And the math is understanding the difference between here's what the market is saying the value of the property is today, but what is the value of that property to the prospective purchaser? It could have been less, could have sat on the market for a year, gone through a reduction cycle, and we were right, like it sells for $650,000. But there happened to be somebody out there that didn't have the capital but was buying, filling, and refinancing buildings that a VTB worked great for. So that, my friends, is what people will pay you more than you'll ever dream of for, because price is only an objection in the absence of value.
Boom. And that actually is the phrase you should all backspace, listen to, write down, because that's also your answer to the consumer who hasn't yet understood your value until you explain it. And now they're willing to hire you and compensate you too. Justin, if somebody wants to reach out to you and find out more about what you offer in the way of speaking, coaching, real estate, all of the different things that you've got your hands in, what's the best way for them to connect with you?
Probably Instagram and YouTube. Just type in my name, Justin Konikow. I'm on all those platforms. You can find me anywhere.
And he does respond to his messages because like me, he knows to check the request tab where people get hidden. And if y'all haven't checked that, go check it. You probably have a piece of business in your social media, in your little hidden account that you haven't checked. Justin, it's always good to see you. Thank you so much for coming on the show. And, um, Even extra excited to know we have a friend in common. This is so cool.
I will come see you when I'm in Concord with my family next time for sure.
I look forward to that. Friends, say something nice about Justin in the comments, or maybe something you learned, picked up on today, your little takeaway, like I've got standards of care. We'll see what you got and then hit the bell, check out some other episodes, and most importantly, come back and see us next time. As always, I'm so super thrilled that you joined in for more crazy shit. And if you are a realtor, investor, inspector, lender, or just a regular human being who happens to have an unbelievable story that you need to tell the world about, or frankly, you just need to one-up the story you just heard, then make sure to DM me on Instagram @leithomasbrown or tweet me @leebrown, or frankly, any social network where you hang out. I'm there. And if you had some fun, then you totally want to subscribe so you don't miss out on any future episodes.
